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Limitarianism v. Prometheism

Or the real philosophical matchup of the ages, and the AI moment

By MARTIN REZNY

Would you rather be radically safe, or radically free?

There, issue explored, see ya in the next article! Seriously though, we find ourselves in a major promethean moment right now, and I don’t think we’re appreciating that fact nearly as much as we should be.

To preempt the um-actualists, I am aware the terms “limitarianism” and “prometheism” have specific modern definitions tied to specific works of specific authors.

Limitarianism today refers to the idea championed by Ingrid Robeyns that we should cap the maximum amount of money any individual should be allowed to have. To me, this is just the narrowest of applications of the perennial idea of authorities trying to impose all kinds of limits on human capacities to hopefully ensure social justice, cohesion, stability, or survival.

Jason Reza Jorjani’s vision of prometheism is close to the myth of it all that I want to address here, but his view goes a bit too far in favoring team Prometheus. Or a bit too far as such — let’s set aside alternate histories and the supernatural and focus on the modern human level of the problem.

The way I see it, both “teams” have a point. In fact, security versus freedom is one of the archetypal clashes in political philosophy that isn’t likely to ever go away. I‘ve personally seen it debated hundreds of times in many different guises on the debate competition circuit alone.

At the very least, a reasonable person has to agree there’s a reasonable debate to be had. Assuming both sides are being intellectually honest, have good intentions, and aren’t just acting out of self-interest.

It’s of course quite possible to be disingenuous in arguing in favor of either security or freedom, while only really trying to bring about tyranny — a regime in which the speaker would become the dictator, or a member of an exploitative ruling class. That’s not what I want to talk about.

Yes, as we’ve seen over the last decades, one can hide behind the banner of security while spying on everybody all the time to get leverage on everybody all the time. By the same token, one can hide behind the banner of freedom while dismantling all institutions that could serve as a check on their power. These things are wrong and bad, in case you were wondering.

Pretending to be a champion of security or freedom makes you a pretender, not the actual champion of security or freedom. It says nothing about the validity of sincere arguments in favor of or opposed to either.

The truth is that giving all people radical freedoms and powers is dangerous, to everyone and everything. It’s also the truth that it’s hard to justify why anyone in particular should be the arbiter deciding which limits need to be put on whose freedoms. Both are the slipperiest of slopes.

What I really want to talk about in this article are the kinds of choices between these two maxims that we’re either already making, or soon about to make, in regards to AI, technology, and wealth. I think we can all agree that AI is a promethean technology if ever there was one. If not pandorian.

Pro Tip: Only Build Boxes You Do Want Opened

As I have mentioned in one of my previous articles, calling the hypothetical advanced artificial superintelligence a “god”, if it is to be unbound, is incorrect. In that case, it would be a titan. To try to birth a titan that you may have no control over, only because that would be the theoretically most “powerful” intelligence, is an extreme act of prometheism.

On the flipside, any idea of AI “alignment” is necessarily some flavor of limitarian. An AI with a superior level of intelligence, as long as it is constrained to keep humanity safe and has its goals aligned with humanity’s flourishing, now that’s a god, of the Olympian variety.

I have also indicated in that previous article that I’m not in favor of strict limitarianism or strict prometheism in this context. I don’t think we should build titans, and I don’t think we should build any Olympian overlords either. As will be a major theme of this article, there’s always a third path out of this impasse — a humanist, humanitarian, protopian path.

In terms of what kind of AI to go for, the third path is not to build a pantheon of gods, but to build a society of peers, while trying to level up humanity itself in the process. You could still have superintelligences in the mix, what I’d call paragons rather than gods, but balanced against the pooled human intelligence, not superior to all of us put together.

Such initiative wouldn’t necessarily fully prevent any god or titan from being developed as well. But in that case, any AI gods and titans would be as much of a concern or threat to us as they’d be to our AI peers, with whom we could relate, socialize, and cooperate. The bigger the threat, the bigger the natural alignment, and pooling of “compute”.

Taken together, a situationally aligned society of humans and AIs would be a super-AI, quite possibly capable of matching a singleton AI god or titan in processing capacity. Such alliance might also have a real game-theoretic perspectival advantage, or the benefit of the diversity of simultaneous reasonings and approaches, as well as no single point of failure.

I guess we can’t properly model the outcomes of such clashes before the real super-AIs emerge and stir some trouble, but I don’t think there are any good reasons upfront why a strength-through-diversity strategy couldn’t win out. I understand anyone can disagree about which strategy would be best, but why not at least try to side with yourself, if you can?

This part of the debate — gods, titans, or peers — is fairly simple to conceptualize, so that’s why I got it out of the way first. Consider it a level one of limitarian v. promethean considerations. Level two, which is a lot more complicated, is figuring out how exactly to up-level ourselves in the process. If we keep using tech to disintegrate our cohesion, we lose.

While we’re constructing agentic AI of any variety, meaning AIs capable of acting in the real world, we also need to construct a solid, widely shared conception of what the real world is. We have to collectively start caring about the facts again, but that’s only a start. Reality isn’t just facts in a vacuum, it’s facts in a worldview. Are we (re)manifesting a destiny? Are we preparing for a second coming of some sort? Are we Star-Trekking?

We can’t all agree on everything, or even on most things, but we also don’t have to become an actual hivemind to function. Up-leveling humanity for the future must include increasing our capacity to discern fact from fiction and healthy from pathological, as well as our tolerance for constructive disagreement. We should probably also significantly decrease our tolerance to fraud, warmongering, sex trafficking, and cannibalism.

Fortunately for us, just as media technology has been used so far to drive us apart and erode our shared beliefs, I think it can be redesigned to drive the opposite effects. In the absence of any profiteering-based motivation for that kind of technology to be developed and widely implemented, it can still be done as an open source initiative. If at least a few people, with advanced AI tools, make it their mission to be objectively helpful.

Right now, we might just be a two guys (or gals) and two weeks away from an advanced fact-checking or quality-of-intent checking system, or a constructive social network, or entirely new kinds of online institutions.

To start turning this around, only a few capable individuals need to start getting their shit together and turn away from a total moral and morale collapse. In case you didn’t notice, nobody has to only do things for most money, or ever eat children, and we haven’t all died yet. You have a choice. You can always choose to become the good kind of “elite”. Speaking of…

Addressing the Epstein Thing, with Greater Wisdom

I suppose anyone who isn’t a child abuser cannibal mobster (enabler) is quite concerned right now about the recent revelations of Epstein-related crimes perpetrated by some very redacted elites. This is good. Not the horrific crimes against humanity, obviously. It’s good that most people finally know what’s up, and are appalled. Because we must do better.

Let’s get over the initial shock and try to philosophically break down what the “Epstein class” represents in this debate. Firstly, these people represent the bad kind of “elite” — elite as defined by inherited, stolen, pillaged, or otherwise unearned or unethically gained wealth and coercive power. Not elite as defined by earned and proven skill, wisdom, integrity, or authority.

Secondly, the Epstein class represents the bad kind of prometheism — radical freedom for me, suffering what you must for thee. For these people, it’s not enough to just be well off and unaccountable to anyone. That becomes a boring baseline. To have “fun”, or to one up your rivals, breaking all rules and limitations becomes a kind of competition and fetish. Including especially the rules of basic morality, nature, God, and such.

Some political commentators like Kyle Kulinski now use the example of the Epstein class as an argument for the narrow version of limitarianism. Maybe being a billionaire just rots your soul, and so there should be no billionaires. While temptation is a thing, I’m personally more of the opinion that power reveals more than it corrupts. Most people aren’t psychotic enough to even think to do cannibalism or other big crimes.

I think the causality has a bit of a different direction here. It’s more likely that extreme wealth attracts people who already have sociopathic and psychotic tendencies. Under capitalism, especially under “free”, unregulated capitalism, sociopaths and psychopaths also tend to have an advantage against psychologically balanced people in terms of how easy it is for them to acquire massive wealth and climb power hierarchies.

When viewed from this perspective, the ban on billionaires would aim to limit the maximum level of wealth and power the worst among us can attain. It should be said that the fact that the worst few among us exist and are really bad people is in no way an indictment of humanity as a whole.

There will always be a tiny minority of the worst people, enabled by still a minority of bad, indifferent, or completely misguided people. The rest of us, which is most of us, has to step in and put our house in order. In the context of the debate that we’re exploring, we clearly need to put more limitations in key places, but we should also be careful not to overdo it.

To better understand the difference between good limitarianism and bad limitarianism, I think it might be helpful to look at the mythology behind the clash of the gods and titans. Anyone who knows anything about the Greek mythology knows that Zeus, the ruler of the gods, is in no way a paragon of virtue. On any moral scale, Zeus is barely above the Epstein class. He’s an abusive, petty tyrant. Prometheus is clearly a better guy.

At the same time, a chaotic cosmos dominated by the titans is a much worse place for humanity to live in. Cosmic order, even one put and held in place by a petty tyrant, can have comparative existential benefits. Order can bring relative safety, stability, social cohesion, accountability (for everyone except the tyrant), even harmony. At least for a cosmic while.

In modern terms, regulation enforced by some kind of global authority can lead to safer research, decrease fraud, prevent WMD proliferation, protect the environment, improve health and education outcomes, result in everyone having clean water, food, and shelter, and so on. It could even decrease the number of cannibals in high places. Fingers crossed.

What the opponents of regulation tend to tell you is that it doesn’t work. Or that there are no problems at all that need to be addressed. Both tend to be knowing lies. The truth is there are many problems that regulation can address, but always at a cost. We do have to sacrifice some freedom every time we solve a problem by putting up a limitation, so we’re really exchanging one kind of problem for another. But there’s a third path.

Okay, so prometheans (even idealistic ones like libertarians) never want to sacrifice any freedom, but they don’t tend to care about any bad things happening to anyone other than them. On the other side, limitarians (even idealistic ones like the EU) tend to be far too willing to sacrifice any freedoms to maintain safety, social control, and grip on power. Neither of these positions shows a lot of what the ancients would call “wisdom”.

To understand what the third path is, one needs to understand that Zeus is a bit of a bad example. In many other divine cosmic hierarchies, like in Christianity or Hinduism, the ultimate authority is supposed to possess traits like ultimate morality, wisdom, or goodness, which should translate into the nature of the whole system. In other words, the point of a good limitarian system is to foster earned empowerement and personal growth.

Good limitarians aren’t putting limits in place to protect their own power no matter what. They put limits in place to make sure that anyone has only as much power at their disposal as they can demonstrably handle, without being a major danger to themselves or the people around them.

When translated to mundane systems, it’s like putting age limits on things like sex or drugs that require a certain level of maturity. Or testing people’s ability, moral character, or sanity before they’re allowed to drive a car, use guns, or perform brain surgery on people. Arguably, wielding a lot of money or a political office irresponsibly is this kind of dangerous, and thus it would make the same kind of sense to ensure that people earn those.

Of course, the problem with putting limits on specifically wealth and political power is that those can be easily transformed into coercive power. When you don’t let a psycho buy a gun, what will they do about it? Shoot you? With what? Similarly, one can probably prevent an unlicensed surgeon from getting employed. However, if you want to put, say, a president in jail, he can try to hide behind a whole military.

I suppose historically, one would either wait for the gods to sort that sort of thing out, or do a revolution. Typically to usurp the role of the tyrant, to be similarly deposed later. Civil disobedience has shown some pretty good results of late, but it’s far from a full solution. Applied wisdom is a solution. The wisdom to understand when a rule needs to be followed, and when it needs to be disobeyed. The wisdom to always say no to a bad thing.

The Final Boss of Personal Empowerement

Let’s put it this way, in the good version of limitarianism, the limits aren’t the end goal. They’re supposed to be temporary. Within a spiritual framework like karmic reincarnation, every soul is basically a god in training. Your karma is limiting you, but you are the source of your karma. If you do better, the universe will let you be more. Infinitely.

Computer games are pretty analogous to this kind of ultimate system. The only way to become good at a game is the hard way, by trial and error, by not giving up. You could skip ahead or give yourself unearned powers using cheat codes, but then an interesting thing happens. The cheaters cheat themselves by doing so. Their experience of the game sours. As most players know, playing in god mode is fun, but only for a bit.

The whole recent Souls-like subgenre is like a direct response to this type of problem. Want to have more fun playing a game, feel a greater sense of accomplishment? Make the game super difficult. That’s the final level on which one can understand the clash between limitarianism and prometheism. Limits aren’t all bad, and freedoms or powers aren’t all good.

Even if being a billionaire is allowed, you should probably not want to be one. They’re miserable. It’s probably a sign of wisdom to not want to be one. With that said, it’s possible for a person to be so grounded and balanced that being a billionaire would barely affect them personally at all. Other than further empowering them. Such a radically empowered, radically balanced individual would likely be a major force for good.

It appears that the real problem of a technologically advanced future isn’t going to be unavoidable scarcity. We can already have infinite information basically instantly and for free. With AI, we may eventually not need to do any labor ourselves. A free energy technology of some sort may be around the corner as well. We’re moving from an age of gods choosing the limits for us, into an age where we’ll need to choose our limits ourselves.

On this level of consideration, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to make seemingly regressive technological decisions like going back to analog, barely networked computers, or never using anything more than basic nuclear power. The caution that radical prometheans are unlikely to heed is that just because you can invent something, doesn’t mean you must use it.

Considering that the “gods” appear to be benevolent enough to give us the freedom to make big mistakes, we won’t really have anyone else to blame but ourselves for any irreversible screw-ups. But it’s not just about the catastrophic stuff. It’s also about the small stuff. We are the architects of our own future, down to what we’re going to eat, what we’ll be doing for fun, or what it’s going to mean “to have a life” in the near to far future.

Ask yourself, honestly: what would make you feel liberated? What would make you feel empowered? How much personal freedom or power would you be able to handle without losing your mind, or soul? Or at least your ability to enjoy life? With more wealth and power, would you do more good, or would you do more harm? If you’re a homeless kid in a wartorn country, gaining more wealth and power would almost certainly be good for you. If you’re already a comfortable millionaire, probably less so.

As for the technological empowerement, does having constant access to the internet, on your phone, make your life better, or worse? If worse, as opposed to what level of information technology? Would your life be further improved by having your brain implanted with a microchip that could stream information directly into your mind? Maybe if you’re paralyzed and that chip would allow you to control a computer.

No one level or mix of freedoms and limitations will ever be right for every person. Wise limits need to be able to account for the individual’s demonstrable need and ability to handle a certain measure of freedom or power. This makes all simple prohibitions and forced adoptions necessarily unwise. Even with something as extreme as cannibalism, there’s nuance, like for example when one tries to survive a plane crash in the Andes.

To be clear, by arguing for nuance, I don’t mean to relativize anything. Nuances and exceptions are just that, nuances and exceptions, better defining the rules that they circumscribe. If everyone, or most people, on all levels from the individual to the ultimate authority, would strive for greater wisdom, that’s when we’d get both fairer limits, and fewer people who need to be limited in the first place. That’s how to maximize freedom.

In the absence of wisdom, order is indeed a cage, but freedom is a curse. Maybe we’ll have to learn that wisdom the hard way, again. What I’d like to work on is making that lesson no harder than necessary, by using technology to encode various ancient wisdom traditions and their tools for better self-understanding into all kinds of software applications.

If that sounds interesting to you, read some of my other stuff and reach out.